Written by Susan Weiss
Manager, Xerox Worldwide Customer Business Development

Two firms with starting points in different locations and decades have had their paths indirectly cross by how they have chosen to serve their customer bases. QuantumDigital began business in 1986 specializing in postcard mailings for real estate agents, while PIP Printing and Marketing Services Columbus got its start in 1974 as a general-purpose commercial printer. Today, the two firms have arrived at a similar place: finding growth by aggregating production volume from small and medium-sized businesses that share industry-specific marketing needs.

Both told their stories during a recent webinar in the 2013 Xerox Business Development Webinar Series, “Targeting: Small and Medium-Sized Businesses…the Volume Aggregation Opportunity.”

And a good-sized opportunity it is with about 6 million SMBs in the United States, according to InfoTrends. “They want to do what every other business does: gain new customers, expand existing relationships and do customer retention effectively. But they are constrained by a lack of budget, time and expertise,” said Barb Pellow, group director, InfoTrends, the webinar’s moderator.

Those are the needs QuantumDigital and PIP Columbus are meeting with solutions that blend print, mobile, social, email and Web components. “We automate marketing to take it from a random act to a systematic one that frequently takes place whether the client touches it or not,” said Eric Cosway, executive vice president and chief marketing officer, Austin, Texas-based QuantumDigital.

For years, QuantumDigital focused on real estate clients, building an information technology expertise that helped them guarantee 24-hour turnarounds. More recently the firm has leveraged its expertise to win work with franchise businesses, such as Hallmark Crown Stores, Michelin and John Deere.

In addition, QuantumDigital partners with AT&T Systems to run Digital Express, an end-to-end direct mail service that serves small businesses from a QuantumDigital-hosted Web site. “We make small businesses look bigger than they are,” Cosway said.

Columbus, Ohio-based PIP Columbus has long counted small- and medium-sized businesses as its heartland customers, but recently began offering marketing services and targeting verticals in a systematic way.

“We’re all aware that a lot of printers who are only printers are going out of business,” said Susan Layman, general manager, PIP Columbus. The franchise took the advice of its franchisor, Franchise Services, Inc. (FSI), she said, “to broaden our base, and develop the expertise to provide a range of marketing services to our customers.”

Among their targets: the 700 dentists in the Columbus area. “They don’t have time to develop marketing plans,” Layman said. “We show how we can help grow their business, and they appreciate it.”

To hear a replay of the “Targeting: Small and Medium-Sized Businesses…the Volume Aggregation Opportunity” webinar, click here. And to sign up for upcoming 2013 Business Development Webinars, including “Targeting: Vertical Markets…The Enterprise Opportunity on June 12,” click here.

Do you target the SMB market? What’s your approach? Is it working?

Interested in other topics similar to growing your business through strategic opportunities? Check out:

• Define Your Target Market as Tightly as Possible
• How to Increase SEO and Generate Sales Leads
• When it comes to Direct Marketing Campaigns: Practice what you Preach
• How do I Market Better and Offer Marketing Services?

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Susan Weiss, manager, Xerox Worldwide Customer Business Development, is Xerox’s host for the 2013 Business Development Webinar Series.

Written by Susan Weiss
Manager, Xerox Worldwide Customer Business Development

One of the best ways to gain an edge in today’s hyper-competitive graphic communications industry is by defining, pursuing and become experts in target markets.

That’s how Barb Pellow, group director, Infotrends, set the stage for our recent Business Development Series webinar on “Targeting the Right Markets,” which featured her and Robert Blakely, vice president, Business Development, Echo Communicate, a Baltimore, Md.-based graphic communications company.

In telling his company’s story, Blakely didn’t so much echo Pellow’s comments as amplify them. When targeting markets, he said, “Start with the tightest vertical focus possible. Find the company most like your initial win, and expand from there.”

That’s what Echo Communicate did after building a successful membership recruitment and retention business with US Lacrosse, that sport’s national governing body. Blakely initiated the business with a cold call about printing the Baltimore-based organization’s membership cards. The conversation quickly escalated to broader membership issues, leading US Lacrosse to give Echo access to its membership data. “We did something with their data that they hadn’t done yet,” Blakely said. “We quantified their pain.”

That helped give Echo the credibility to develop a highly automated, XMPie-software-based membership retention solution for US Lacrosse. In the first year, it boosted retention by 26 percent.

With that success, Echo began pursuing like organizations for its solution, focusing exclusively on national governing bodies of other sports. The tight definition optimized the expertise Echo was developing, and made collecting target information easy. “We had a list of national governing bodies in just a few minutes,” Blakely said.

Echo introduced the solution by using a multi-channel invitation with personalized sports imagery to invite prospects to a webinar featuring a US Lacrosse executive. Of 80 invitees, 40 attended. They heard a compelling message. “Nothing is more powerful than having our client tell their peers how wonderful it is to work with us,” Blakely said.

Several attendees are new customers. Because the solution is so automated and specialized, sales cycles and rollouts have been progressively easier and faster. And because the Echo team is now immersed in the vertical, its expertise has grown exponentially. In addition, margins are higher than in the traditional print business. In short, Blakely said, “It’s a winner.”

To hear a replay of the “Targeting the Right Markets” webinar, click here. And be sure to sign up for our upcoming 2013 Business Development Webinars, including “Targeting: Small and Medium-Sized Businesses…the Volume Aggregation Opportunity” on April 17 and “Targeting: Vertical Markets…The Enterprise Opportunity on June 12,” click here.

Have you experienced success by tightly defining a vertical and offering customized solutions? What drives your successes in targeting markets?

If you enjoyed this post, you may also be interested in:

• XMPie Cross-Media Campaign Boosts College Admissions for Maryland Institution
• Do you Encourage your Customers to Interact?
• Personalized Renewal Notices Boost Membership Rates for Football Club
• You Don’t Have to Become a Marketing Services Provider to Offer Marketing Services

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Susan Weiss, manager, Xerox Worldwide Customer Business Development, is Xerox’s host for the 2013 Business Development Webinar Series

Written By Bill Michael
Marketing Analyst
Xerox Corporation

You know them: hearing, sight, touch, smell, taste. At drupa, each of your senses will be put to great use, as you will:

• Hear: The excitement of the 1000s of attendees in the print industry having conversations on a variety of topics.
• See: Technology and software that represents the future of our industry
• Touch: Printed samples with specialty media, innovative finishing, and special toner
• Smell: toner, ink and paper in the air as you walk by every vendors stand.
• Taste: German cuisine (maybe for the first time) and perhaps a few brands of German beer with some friends and colleagues.

At the Xerox stand (Hall 8b), your senses can best be used by seeing and touching the applications that we’ll be showcasing live in our stand, including many Best-of-the-Best winners. These winners include: IOS (Digital and Offset), Mediaware (Digital Packaging), MBA Group Limited (TransPromo), Telemail, S.L. (TransPromo), Easy Print (Photo Publishing), Printshop (Photo Publishing). Three additional winners include:

	DG3 Europe Limited (Best Overall Solution, case study) The Duke of Edinburgh’s Award, the largest youth charity in the UK, wanted to enable their award winners to create and order personalized Achievement Packs online. They approached DG3 Europe Limited, who mapped out an end-to-end solution using FreeFlow Process Manager™ and the iGen4 with a Xerox FreeFlow™ Print Server – resulting in a 637% increase in usage of the achievement pack.
	De Budelse (Digital Packaging, case study) Recognizing the growing area of digital packaging, De Budelse built FotoChoco.nl to enable orders of personalized boxes of chocolate. Using the iGen4 and FreeFlow Print Server, they were able to sell over 11,000 boxes of chocolate. (your sense of taste!)
	CopyCat (Direct Marketing, case study) Using the Xerox Color 1000 Press, CopyCat used clear dry ink and personalized cross media to drive new business. The campaign generated a 10% response rate and helped bring in 20 new orders from new customers.

Please stop by Xerox Stand in Hall 8B to see and touch these great applications. We’ll find other ways to exercise your other senses!

Written by:
Howard Fenton
Senior Technology Consultant
NAPL

There are important changes in SEO or search engine optimization since Google’s announcement that their search criteria is placing more emphasis on blogs, backlinks and multiple media (videos).

On John Foleys panel at the MFSA Spring Conference, Wes Powell from TMR Direct talked about how they use blogs as their major marketing focus. They have been blogging for a while and today they plan blogs two months in advance.

As a result, when they looked at their search engine optimization recently they were #2 on the Google list. One thing that was not discussed and is often overlooked is what determines success in blogs is storytelling.

As anyone who has ever Tweeted knows one of the greatest challenges is the ability to tell a story or capture someone’s attention in very few words. Those who succeed master the art of storytelling. Let’s face it – we are a culture of storytellers.

Look at the most influential CEO’s, or most popular TV anchors, your favorite newspaper or magazine columnists or your favorite actors, you will probably see that a common denominator is that they are all good storytellers.

They may choose controversial words, emotional words, or words that emit a vision, but they craft their message well. We can read books or take classes on the effectiveness of social media, but the key is telling a good story.

Here are a few tips to craft your message well:

• understand your key message
• pique their curiosity
• recognize why it’s important to your audience
• elicit interest or emotion
• engage your audience with your message
• motivate feedback

On the panel at MFSA, many people talked about the challenge of selling new services to traditional clients. Blogging, webinars and online video were discussed as ways of driving new prospects to their websites. Prospects that become customers were willing to invest in ongoing campaigns which resulted in higher billing rates and profitability when compared to traditional services.

How are you going to attract new clients to your website?

Howard Fenton is a Senior Technology Consultant at NAPL. Howie advises commercial printers, in-plants, and manufacturers on workflow management, operations, digital services, and customer research. He is a paid contributor to this blog.

Written by:
Howard Fenton
Senior Technology Consultant
NAPL

As we prepare to publish our fourth Digital Services White paper, we are analyzing the data and following up with phone interviews trying to figure out what is working and what is not working. One question we ask on many studies is “What’s expected to grow the fastest”? It is hoped that the answer will help better identify changes in customer demand and identify new growth opportunities.

It is also interesting to compare these answers over time, to see if there are any trends developing. So let’s take a brief look at how our latest results compare to the results of the 2006 State of the Industry report.

• In the 2006 data as in the 2012 data, variable data printing was the number one answer growing from 57% in 2006 to 62% this year.
• The number 2 answer this year was a tie between web to print and static digital printing at 41%. In comparision static digital printing was the number four answer in 2006 at 40% and web to print the #9 answer at 19%
• Mailing dropped from the #2 spot in 2006 at 44% to the #6 spot this year at 26%.
• Four-color or more litho dropped from #3 at 43% in 2006 to number #10 at 18%.
• Fulfillment dropped from its #4 spot at 39% in 2006 to #7 position at 22%.

Looking at this comparison speaks volumes about the changes in the industry. Six years ago, the digital changes in our industry were just starting to be recognized; at that point, the traditional services were just starting to slow. As we look at this comparison, we see clearly the decline in 4C litho, mailing and fulfillment and the increase in web-to-print, marketing/cross media services, and database management.

After listening to presentations at the Vision 3 Summit and MFSA recently, I heard two metaphors that stood out and described the impact of these changes. One was “get on board the training, it is leaving the station and if you don’t get on the train you will be left behind.” The other was “An ostrich with its head in the sand is just as blind to opportunity as to disaster.”

Two questions to consider. Is your head in the sand? What are you doing to get on board the digital train?

Howard Fenton is a Senior Technology Consultant at NAPL. Howie advises commercial printers, in-plants, and manufacturers on workflow management, operations, digital services, and customer research. He is a paid contributor to this blog.

Written by Christina Vullo, Social Media Marketing Analyst at Xerox Corporation

Today, more and more businesses are creating Facebook pages as a way to market themselves online; but with so many new pages being created, the question arises “How can a print service provider use Facebook to successfully promote their business?”

Peter Muir shows how in his book Print Providers Guide to Social Media.  According to Muir, the first thing print service providers should focus on when implementing a Facebook strategy is how it can benefit their business.  When used correctly, Facebook can be a great marketing tool.  It can create interest in a brand, add a level of interactivity, and act as an additional information source for customers.  In order to be successful, Muir recommends researching other print service providers to see what makes them successful on Facebook, then creating a plan of action.  He also suggests using the page to interact with your customers, posting often, and including pictures, videos, and blog posts.

Following the advice of Peter Muir, we’ve decided to create our own Facebook page.  You can find us on Facebook at facebook.com/XeroxDigitalPrint.  Feel free to stop by and “like” our page to stay up-to-date on the latest Xerox Digital Print news.

How are you using Facebook to market to your customers?

Written by Joel Basa, e-Marketing Manager at Xerox Corporation

In our current business environment, no two days are alike. Think of yesterday? One week ago? One month ago? Are you focusing on the same business priorities for each timeframe? For a successful business, I’m sure the answer is yes AND no. YES to the fact that you’re sticking to your strategy and “staying the course” but NO since you’ve had to adjust some of your resources to look at ways to capture new business opportunities.

Howie Fenton’s Blog Post, “75% of Small Businesses Believe in Cross Media Marketing,” highlights something I’ve been hearing from my collegues and customers alike: the desire to expand services/capabilities but the realization that they need guidance and information on how to best do this.

Implementation challenges come in many forms: resource constraints, infrastructure requirements, technical know-how, business skill gaps, just to name a few. A growing trend in the industry is for businesses to supplement their resources with professional services in specific areas: workflow optimization, color management, business skills and intelligence, implementation of VDP and Trans-Promo.

The addition of these services can help a business quickly come up to speed on areas that will help them reduce their cost and delight their customers. The flexibility of this model helps them get started and lets them build their business by reducing their risk. This model eliminates the need for up-front investment in infrastructure and software before they know how well their customers will receive it.

Looking at your own business, what are the specific areas that you’d like guidance in getting started and help in developing? What services would help you? How are you adjusting your business strategies and resource allocation to address your customer requirements? We’re curious to know.